Iran Shuts Down Google Gmail

According to The Wall Street Journal, Iran has shut down access to Google’s Gmail.

Iran’s local telecommunications board announced yesterday that it will shut down its access to Google’s Gmail permanently.Instead, it will invest in a national email service that will be launched shortly.

We have heard from users in Iran that they had trouble accessing Gmail.We can confirm that the traffic from Iran has dropped noticably and it is not due to technical problems from our side, says a spokesperson for Google to The Wall Street Journal.

A spokesman for the Iranian government stated that the reason that it has chosen to block Gmail is because they want to promote local development of Internet technology and to create better relations between the people and the Iranian state.

If the Iranian state can get people to use a state-controlled e-mail service it means they can gain access to all its residents e-mail messages, said Richard Stiennon from the security company It-harvest to the Wall Street Journal.

Iran’s decision to block Gmail was announced only a week after a report stating that Google is planning a collaboration with the American intelligence organization the NSA.